CLASH BY NIGHT: powerhouse performances by stand-out stars

Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Ryan in a drama directed by Fritz Lang! 
It doesn't get much better than this.
1952's CLASH BY NIGHT plays to the strengths of both stars' screen persona while also confounding our expectations.

Stanwyck is Mae Doyle, a cynical, hard-boiled middle-aged dame, selfish and embittered from life's experiences who returns to her impoverished working-class hometown and turns its' menfolk upside down.
Ryan is Earl Pfeiffer, one of those menfolk. Unhappily married to a permanently absent wife, he's similarly cynical about human nature, and irresistibly drawn to Mae. She however is fighting with fate and rejects Earl's advances, choosing instead to marry his kindhearted but weak-willed friend, Jerry D'Amato (Paul Douglas). She hopes it'll turn her into the domesticated and loyal housewife she believes she must become if she's to have any chance of finding happiness.
Earl's ardor is not to be dampened by  trifles like marriage or a baby, setting the stage for a clash of wills that is totally enthralling. Stanwyck and Ryan work magnificently together, trading barbs and looks of illicit lust without ever attempting to upstage one another. One can only imagine how much professional pleasure both experienced from working with someone so equally matched in talent and yet so completely lacking in ego. 
Their generosity extends to the rest of the cast. In many ways it's Douglas's character who is at the centre of this story because without him you've just got two unpleasant people who deserve the unhappiness they inevitably bring to their relationship. A pre-glamour superstar Marilyn Monroe works surprisingly well in the part of Peggy, a young Cannery Row worker frustrated with the limitations of her life and fully possessing the potential to become another Mae.
The odd line of overblown dialogue occasionally belies CLASH BY NIGHT's  theatrical origins (the film's based on the play by Clifford Odets) but it's to credit of veteran director Lang that these don't detract from the cinematic experience. This is very much a film, not a filmed play with a couple of outdoor scenes thrown in to open out the action.
This film is wrongly identified as film noir on several reputable movie websites that should know better. CLASH BY NIGHT is a drama and a damn fine one too. Watch it and enjoy!